twoplustwoequalsblog

For the last week, I have been staying with Ellen and her family in Michigan. Michigan is an interesting place. They have a bad economy due to the auto industry doing poorly. Every company in Michigan either: makes cars, makes things that companies that make cars need, or provides services that people who make cars need. While Detroit is more of a city than Hartford, it is even less attractive to go to than Hartford. There is a surplus of housing, as many billboards for developments featured “move in today!”. The state government is trying to fix it, but it is so deeply rooted in industry that it will be hard.

The residential unit is not a “neighborhood” as we know it in New England. Everything is on a mile grid system, which “subs” are attached to. These are like super strictly defined clusters of houses, sort of like new sub-divisions in CT, but completely unlike the “cut through lots of neighborhoods to get where you’re going” type street system we have. Subs sometimes have their own mini parks and playgrounds, and there are multiple high schools and lots of elementary schools per municipality.

There are different traffic conventions too. Anything that would be a white hanging sign is a lighted box here. Left-turn-both-ways lanes are rampant. Lights blinking red mean “turn left at discretion.” If there is a common left turn on a one lane road, the road will temporarily swell to two lanes to pass. A “Michigan left” is turning right and then doing a U-turn, and is often required to get where you want to go. And never before in my life have I seen so much road repair going on.

It’s different.